There's so much of it, it feels impenetrable. Shenmue 2's Hong Kong isn't the biggest of open worlds, and unlike the Yokosuka suburb that preceded it, it can hardly claim to be the densest. Yet AM2's Hong Kong is thick with character and purpose: an overwhelming city where you sink into a gentle rut amidst its wider rhythms, where human life flows through its streets, ebbing in from the harbour before it splashes down sidewalks and sends slow, chattering oxbows around cluttered alleyways.

It's a common banality to mark Hong Kong as a city of contrasts; where the stiff-lipped colonies clash with traditional Chinese culture, where east meets west and tradition meets modernity. That's all hokum, though, and Shenmue 2's not one to deal in such platitudes. It gets down to a greater truth about not only this city, but all great metropolis: the unknowable sprawl, where the urban space is painted as eternally indifferent.

Shenmue 2 came to the Dreamcast less than a year after the original - in Europe, at least - yet it offers a steep shift in scale and tone. Having slowly tracked your father's killer Lan Di through Yokosuka and beyond Japan, as Ryo Hazuki you find yourself on the shores of Hong Kong, taking up the quest in typically ponderous fashion. Like Shenmue before it, this isn't a game about revenge, or even one fuelled by bloodlust. Its essence is something more pedestrian, more profoundly ordinary.

Bruce, almighty. As widescreen summer entertainments go, Batman: Arkham Knight is big, brash and badass enough to mix it with any of 2015's movie blockbusters. It's even been marketed as the conclusion of an epic trilogy, equating London-based developers Rocksteady with popcorn auteurs like Christopher Nolan or Peter Jackson and positioning Arkham Knight as the capstone to some grand, overarching mythos. (This also conveniently sweeps 2013's snowy Arkham Origins, the competent but slightly underwhelming prequel developed separately by Warner Bros Montreal, under the bat-carpet.)

But before Batman: Arkham Asylum rubber-stamped Rocksteady as major industry players in 2009, they'd already created a game where one man attempts to save a beleaguered city from eccentric criminals using a combination of hi-tech gear and down-and-dirty street-fighting. Eidos published Rocksteady's first game in 2006, two years after Sefton Hill and Jamie Walker established the studio. During development, it had been codenamed Roll Call. But when it arrived on PS2 and Xbox, it was rebranded Urban Chaos: Riot Response, which certainly sounds like an exciting collection of words. (The Urban Chaos part was lifted from a forgotten PS1/PC game Eidos had previously published; the Riot Response bit was essentially the player's job description.)

To continue the auteur theory: before you go and see the new Fantastic Four movie, you might rewatch Chronicle, Josh Trank's previous film as writer/director, to see if it helps you get a handle on his reboot. Similarly, the rapturous reaction to Colin Trevorrow's Jurassic World could send intrigued dino-fans back to the director's first movie, the low-budget time-travel tale Safety Not Guaranteed, to try and work out what impressed Spielberg so much he handed over the reins to a beloved franchise. In that spirit, I wanted to return to Urban Chaos: Riot Response - in search of any Batman breadcrumbs. The core Rocksteady crew that created Urban Chaos had a major hand in Arkham Asylum three years later. Could rugged riot cop Nick Mason be a proto-Bruce Wayne?

The actor died on Sunday at a London hospital after being treated for respiratory problems and heart failure, The Daily Telegraph reports.

Lee made his name with 1950s Hammer horror films, but he also famously played Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man (1973) and Scaramanga in James Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun (1974). More recently, Lee found a new audience after playing Saruman in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings films, and Count Dooku in the last two Star Wars films.

Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee is getting a mobile version on iOS and Android devices, the game's original developer Oddworld Inhabitants has announced.

The port is being handled by Square One Games, who previously ported Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath and The Bard's Tale to mobile platforms.

Munch's Oddysee marked Oddworld's first foray into 3D gaming in 2001. It followed the tale of the last Gabbit, a frog-like creature fished to near extinction. He and series stalwart Abe team up to take down the evil corporation that has slaughtered their brethren.

GameStop is going to experiment with accepting and selling used retro consoles, accessories and video games.

The popular retail chain revealed this upcoming trade-in program to IGN, where it noted that this will begin as an experiment across roughly 250 locations in New York City and Birmingham, Alabama.

IGN reported that starting on 25th April participating locations will accept video game goods dating all the way back to the NES era. If the program is successful, GameStop hopes to expand it nationwide by the end of the year.

As reported by the Hollywood Reporter, Radcliffe would play Rockstar co-founder and president Sam Houser. The programme will focus on the drama between Houser and Miami lawyer Jack Thompson, who often sought restitution from Rockstar when violent crimes were committed by folks who also played Grand Theft Auto. Thompson was later disbarred in 2008 for 27 cases of professional misconduct.

The drama is going to be directed by Owen Harris, who directed that episode of Black Mirror where a woman builds an android replacement for her late husband, and that episode of Misfits where a dude wreaks havoc by telekinetically controlling dairy products.

Microsoft considered the idea of providing the original Xbox console for free.

That's according to Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning, speaking in a new interview with GamesIndustry.biz.

Before the launch of the original Xbox, while Microsoft was still attempting to nail down its plans for entering the console space, the company had an idea that its new gaming hardware should be provided without an upfront charge.

They don't make 'em like they used to. With Xbox 360's abysmal failure rate and PS3s often falling victim to the yellow light of death, it's a strange that so many consoles from the 90s are still running just fine. To test these vintage video game platforms' durability, the folks at Wired decided to experiment with which ones could survive a 15 foot drop.

Ranging from Super Nintendo to PS3, 12 consoles were selected for this grueling test of valor.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1744279Fri, 20 Mar 2015 23:44:00 +0000BBC is making a drama about the creation of Grand Theft Auto

The BBC is making a 90-minute live-action drama about the inception of Grand Theft Auto.

Games and tech journalist Guy Cocker called it "a 90-minute feature-length drama focussing on the people behind its creation."

The programme will be part of the BBC's Make it Digital initiative as an effort to generate interest in tech amongst youngsters.

The Phantom Dust remake's future is looking uncertain as Microsoft has ended its working relationship with the game's developer Darkside Game Studio.

The publisher confirmed this in a recent statement to Eurogamer, but it also noted that the game will remain in development sans-Darkside.

"Microsoft partnered with Darkside Game Studios in the development of 'Phantom Dust,' but our working relationship has now ended," a Microsoft spokesperson said. "We have great respect for their studio and their work in the industry. While we do not have anything new to share on 'Phantom Dust' at this time, we can confirm that development of the title continues. We look forward to sharing more details on the game as we get closer to release."

Big-name actors lending their vocal talents and motion-capture expertise to games are commonplace nowadays. But Captain America's Chris Evans made headlines last week for showing off his guns in a TV spot for China's free-to-play Call of Duty: Online, despite having no ties to the actual game itself.

He's not the only actor to have a starring role in a gaming commerical, however. Before they were famous - and, in some cases, afterwards - these 11 celebrities cut their teeth on a series of delightfully kitsch advertisements for gaming consoles and products. The blink-and-you miss-it cameo from alien sibling duo Zig and Zag may well make your day, and that's before the flying motorbike scene even gets a look-in. Look, it'll make more sense if you just watch. Probably.

Half-Life 2 has met the fate of all exceptional games. The 'classic' moniker almost instantly embalms them, gradually fossilising to a few forever-parroted talking points while the living entity is obscured. Physics, story, environmental design - Gravity Gun, City 17, Ravenholm. The game is shorn of context, too, and compared with successors that stripped its bones of ideas and sometimes improved on them. The keenly-felt absence of Half-Life 3 helps with this impression, but Half-Life 2 feels like a game on a tightrope - not stuck in the middle, exactly, so much as a pioneer of the modern first-person shooter that still contains much of the 'old' first-person shooter.

Half-Life 2's immediate competition was Doom 3, a comparison that's worth bearing in mind, because they're both linear corridor shooters designed to give the player a directed experience. When you enter a Doom 3 room and hit a button, monsters will pour out of the walls. When you see the trigger for a trap in Ravenholm, you know a zombie will soon appear near it. When you see rockets, you know you're going to fight a helicopter.

Let's not pick on Doom 3 too much, because it's fine for what it is, but this call-and-response design can be the bane of a linear game; if it becomes too predictable or repetitive, the player gets bored. The difference between Half-Life 2 and other linear shooters is how much effort has been put into its environments and pacing, how it peaks and troughs, and how much incidental stuff there is to find. id Software can make a gun go boom as well as anyone, but Valve give that squeeze of the trigger more context and impact than anyone.

Given Sunset Overdrive's obvious debt to Jet Set Radio and its role as a key Xbox One exclusive, where better to go for this weekend's archive piece? This retrospective was originally published in September 2012.

One morning a few days back, somewhere near the Shibuya bus terminal, Combo asked me to copy his moves. Up a ramp, over a lamppost, along a few rippling curves of fencing and then out across the street. Turn and bow. Simple things. There was a problem, though: I was rusty, and I'd lost my skating skills.

Actually, it's so much more embarrassing than that. In reality, I was rusty and sitting on the other side of a TV screen, and I'd lost my pretend skating skills.

Every Sunday we present an article from our archive - giving you a chance to discover something for the first time, or maybe just to get reacquainted. This week, with the Conker-starring Project Spark finally releasing, we go back to Wes' interview with the man behind Rare's foul-mouthed mascot.

Chris Seavor left Rare in January 2011 after 17 years at the legendary UK developer. While there he worked on most of the studio's games: Killer Instinct, Perfect Dark and Banjo-Kazooie included. But he's best known for taking the cute Twelve Tales: Conker 64 and turning it into the profanity and poo packed N64 adventure Conker's Bad Fur Day - Rare's last game for a system that had never seen anything like it.

After the studio he so loved was bought by Microsoft he remade Conker's Bad Fur day for the Xbox. Conker: Live & Reloaded launched in 2005 with dumbed down content and Live-enabled multiplayer. We haven't seen a game in the series since.

Citizens of Marin County, California can turn in their violent video games to the local government in exchange for ice cream.

Ben & Jerry's ice cream, to be exact.

As reported by the Marin Independent Journal, this is part of a new initiative by Marin County district attorney Ed Berberian. Berberian joined forces with Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream along with the Center for Domestic Peace to set up a drive in which locals can turn in both video games and toy guns to receive some sweet, sweet dairy treats.

Eurogamer turned 15 this week (happy birthday to us, etc!) and Bungie's latest game, Destiny, is due out on Tuesday, so when we were considering which article to drag out of the archive this weekend there really was only one choice. Eurogamer's launch editor John "Gestalt" Bye (we all had nicknames back then) penned this famous critique of Halo: Combat Evolved way back in the day, which left us with a legacy of "Better than Halo?" comments directed at any other review with a high score forever after. Always with the wit.

Read on to see what John made of Halo when he published this review on 13th March 2002, the eve of the original Xbox's European launch. Having worked with John in the early days of the site, I'd like to apologise to him should he happen upon this relic for going through and adding a few more hyphens than he would have liked, but I will preserve his strange love of incomplete ellipses floating in space. -Tom B

Of all the games in the Xbox's European launch line-up, Halo is
perhaps the nearest the console comes to having a killer app. It's
the biggest-selling Xbox title to date in America, and the press on
the other side of the pond have been raving about it for months.
Now that it's finally arrived here in Europe, the question is, can
it live up to the hype? And the answer is yes .. and no.

BioWare executive producer Casey Hudson has left the renowned studio after 16 years.

Hudson began his tenure at BioWare back in 1998 where he served as a technical artist on such games as MDK2 and Neverwinter Nights. He then moved up in the world and became the project director for the smash hit Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Following that, he fulfilled the same role in each entry of BioWare's other sci-fi trilogy, Mass Effect.

"I'll take a much needed break, get perspective on what I really want to do with the next phase of my life, and eventually, take on a new set of challenges," said Hudson in his resignation letter.

Let me tell you the story of the number 33, an American teenager called Marine14, and how I never became a doctor of film.

It's a story in which I claim that Halo 2 is a masterpiece, which is especially exciting because I can't remember much of what happened in the single-player side of the game aside from me getting quite cross and wishing Bungie had read more Robert McKee. Actually, I only wish that was true - I do remember more.

I remember a plant made of flesh who rearranged the story's major players in an unprecedented act of deus ex flora, I remember playing as not-Master Chief for longer than the zero seconds I would have found this acceptable, and I remember that the campaign wasn't so much forgettable as actually unfinished, less of a cliffhanger than a narrative power cut.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1683512Mon, 09 Jun 2014 11:00:00 +0100World's largest video game collection is being auctioned off

On 3rd December 2012, Buffalo, New York resident Michael Thommason made history by having the Guinness Book of World Records certify his gaming collection as the largest in existence. At the time it consisted of 10,607 games, though Thommason noted in a YouTube comment last November that it was nearly 12,000 titles strong.

Now, he's auctioning it all off.

Along with the games, the winner of this GameGavel auction will also receive the actual Guinness certificate as well as a lifetime subscription to Retro Magazine - which includes an autographed copy of its premiere issue featuring this very collection.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1682937Fri, 06 Jun 2014 02:57:00 +0100THQ sure left a lot of cool stuff in its former HQ

When Reddit user Soulessgingr's work relocated to a new building in Agoura Hills, California, he was delighted to see that it was actually the proverbial burial ground of former video game publisher THQ. Better yet, it still had a lot of cool memorabilia from the publisher's heyday.

Soulessgingr said he'd heard that all this paraphernalia was intentionally left behind as assets meant to make up for owed rent. "The building manager purchased all the stuff that was left and THQ also left some stuff (hardware mostly) because they owed a lot of money for back rent," the Reddit user said. He later added that another colleague verified that the building owner paid THQ for the sweet swag.

Aside from the cool, vaguely melancholy ambiance of working in a place haunted by totems of a once great video game publisher, Soulessgingr was given three of the left behind posters for Darksiders 2. "I was given Darksiders 2 posters a while ago because the CIO knew I loved that game when he did the initial tour," he explained. The lucky buck.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1680802Wed, 28 May 2014 19:52:00 +0100Watch Dogs PC unplayable for many due to Uplay errors

Ubisoft's new open-world hacking-based adventure Watch Dogs is suffering its own encryption-based foibles as at least hundreds of players - and presumably more - are unable to access the game on PC due to authentication errors on Uplay.

The problem is at least somewhat widespread according to this 34 page thread on Steamworks dedicated to players who have received the following message: "Uplay has detected an unrecoverable error".

Grand Theft Auto's 3, Vice City, and San Andreas have arrived on Amazon's Android-based video game console Fire TV, as well as Kindle Fire.

While Fire TV is still only available in the US, the UK listing for GTA: San Andreas noted that it has "support for FireTV", so expect it to be available locally if and when the console makes its way here.

Classic franchises such as Banjo-Kazooie and Viva Piñata are coming to Xbox One - in the form of new Kinect Sports Rivals challenge packs.

Kinect Sports developer Rare has turned to its much-loved back catalogue for a range of DLC themed around Banjo-Kazooie, Battletoads, Blast Corps, Perfect Dark and Viva Piñata, each of which costs £2.39.

The packs include themed challenges and exclusive gear to unlock for your champion.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1676125Fri, 09 May 2014 14:28:00 +0100Halo Legendary speed run sets new world record

The speed running world record for completing the original Halo on its hardest difficult, Legendary, has just been set by 26-year old Canadian Andrew "goatrope" Halabourda who wrapped up the game in a tidy 1:38:57.

According the the SpeedDemosArchive, there are quicker runs - down to 1:20:51 - but these are captured in segments. 122 segments to be precise, captured between two runners, whereas Halabourda's run was all in one go, livestreamed last Friday (thanks, Kotaku).

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1674838Tue, 06 May 2014 01:05:00 +0100Madden NFL 15 touches down in August

Popular American football series Madden NFL is bringing its latest installment to Europe on 29th August, EA has announced.

Available for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3 and PS4, Madden NFL 15 will hit North American retailers earlier that week on 26th August.

EA Sports will be collaborating with ESPN on a poll so the public can vote on which player is featured on the cover. More details about this will be revealed during the NFL Draft on 8th May on ESPN and NFL Network.

Knights of the Old Republic never really happened. Not only did it not happen a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, it never happened in the official Star Wars canon. That's what Lucasfilm is now claiming, along with every comic book, novel and video game to bear the Star Wars moniker.

"[George] Lucas always made it clear that he was not beholden to the EU [Expanded Universe]. He set the films he created as the canon. This includes the six Star Wars episodes, and the many hours of content he developed and produced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars," Lucasfilm stated in a recent blog post on the matter. "These stories are the immovable objects of Star Wars history, the characters and events to which all other tales must align."

I don't think anyone would argue with that - even if we might argue with Lucas' decision to helm the prequels himself. The next part is where things get serious.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1672764Fri, 25 Apr 2014 23:28:00 +0100"We have the ambition to build the best gaming console for fans"

New Xbox boss Phil Spencer has discussed his 26-year career at Microsoft and how he intends to take Xbox One forward in a new video interview with Major Nelson.

Spencer, who started at Microsoft in 1988 as a software development intern from the University of Washington, joined the Xbox team when Ed Fries, one of the creators of the first Xbox console, asked him to work with developers on Xbox games.

Spencer worked with then Lionhead chief Peter Molyneux on fantasy role-playing game Fable and Brian Reynolds on real-time strategy game Rise of Nations in the early days of Xbox.

Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning was once working on a competitive multiplayer game in the Oddworld universe tentatively titled Stranger Arena.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Lanning explained that a prototype of the game was made shortly after production ended on Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath in 2005. Like the Xbox surrealist take on spaghetti westerns, Stranger Arena would have been a mix of first-person shooting and third-person platforming.

"We had it running, Stranger Arena," Lanning told us. "You were using Stranger mechanics, but you were going head to head with other Strangers. You were doing multiplayer platforming and first-person shooting. So the dynamics of Stranger's [Wrath] in arenas, head to head. I have to say, we were really excited about this."

Rockstar Games brother-bosses Sam Houser and Dan Houser made a rare public appearance in London last night to accept the prestigious BAFTA Fellowship award on behalf of the 900 other people who work at their company.

Dan Houser's speech capped an evening that saw The Last of Us win five awards, including Best Game, and Grand Theft Auto and Tearaway win three. Gone Home, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, BioShock Infinite, FIFA 14, Size DOES Matter and Papers, Please all won one apiece.

As expected, Stephen Elop, the former head of Microsoft-owned Nokia, has assumed control over Xbox.

According to The Verge, the 50-year-old Canadian replaces Julie Larson-Green as the head of Microsoft's Devices and Studios business, which operates Xbox, Surface, Windows Phone and Microsoft Studios.

Larson-Green, who was in charge of Xbox as it launched Xbox One in November 2013, side-steps to a new role as Chief Experience Officer for the Applications and Services group. This deals with Bing, Office and Skype.

Every Sunday we reach back into the Eurogamer archive in the hope of uncovering an interesting feature you missed at the time or might enjoy reading again. With Dungeon Keeper back in the headlines this week, we thought this piece, originally published in October 2012, was worth revisiting.

With a brace of Fables behind his old studio and the Curiosity project edging closer to release, there's a danger that future generations may never know the sweet, salty pain of a Peter Molyneux-hyped project that fails to materialise. Bearing all that in mind, it seems like a good time to pick over a few of the most interesting Lionhead and Bullfrog games that never made it to shelves - and maybe shed a tear or two along the way.

Here's the important thing, though: getting cancelled isn't the only things these fascinating projects have in common. They all share a certain wayward ambition and an eagerness to take players somewhere genuinely new. They're a testament to two studios where designers and artists have always been encouraged to think about the medium in different ways; given the potential round of between-projects redundancies hitting Lionhead this week, it's a great time to celebrate the team's creative legacy.

Microsoft has given Satya Nadella, its new CEO, a raise. His basic annual salary is now $1.2m - payable semi-monthly.

That's according to an SEC filing posted yesterday (US law requires Nadella's compensation be made public), spotted by ZDNet.com.

There's more, of course. Much more. Nadella is a part of Microsoft's Executive Incentive Program. This includes a cash award - a bonus - of up to 300 per cent of his salary earned for the remainder of the 2014 fiscal year and all of the 2015 fiscal year. And it includes a stock award for the company's 2015 fiscal year, worth a whopping $13.2m.

Microsoft has a new CEO - Satya Nadella - and Phil Spencer, boss of Microsoft Studios, has welcomed the appointment.

"Congrats to Satya Nadella on becoming new Microsoft CEO," Spencer said on Twitter last night. "Good leader, good guy and will be a great CEO."

Microsoft veteran Nadella, who successfully spearheaded Microsoft's cloud services, is yet to comment on the future of Xbox, but Spencer believes the gaming division is held in high regard by the higher ups at the gargantuan company.

No exciting new releases means no exciting goings-on in the UK video game chart this week.

FIFA 14 remains top for a fourth week in a row (nine top-spots in total), trailed by Call of Duty: Ghosts in second and Battlefield 4 in third. Lego Marvel Superheroes is fourth and Asassin's Creed 4: Black Flag fifth.

Ian Livingstone CBE has done it all: tabletop games, game books and of course video games. He co-founded Games Workshop, co-wrote Fighting Fantasy and co-launched Tomb Raider. He's been all over the world, wearing in each city a different hat. He's met with success, failure, ups and downs. But now, at an age when some might have craved a comfy retirement, he's coming home, to where it all began, to start the next chapter in the adventure book of his life.

In 1978 Ian Livingstone opened the first Games Workshop store in Hammersmith, west London. Without the push of a Facebook page or a trending hashtag, people came. People queued. Kids queued round the street, their imaginations excitedly awaiting a spark.

Steve Ballmer, in his last shareholder meeting as Microsoft CEO, gave a rousing response to concerns about his company's devices - its phones, tablets, computers, consoles and Kinects - invading people's privacy.

"We are very focused on the issues with respect to government intelligence gathering, whether it's this government in the United States or governments around the world," Ballmer said (transcript on Seeking Alpha).

Every Sunday we haul an exciting article out of the Eurogamer archive so you can read it again or enjoy it for the first time if you missed it. Wesley's piece on Xbox's trials and tribulations in Japan was originally published on 14th December 2012.

Bill Gates was preparing to walk out on stage to deliver his much-anticipated keynote at the Tokyo Game Show on Friday 30th March 2001. The Makuhari Exhibition Hall was packed with a 4000-strong audience. Executives from all the major Japanese game publishers were there: Capcom, Square, Tecmo, Sega, Namco, the lot. Press had gathered from all over the world, and they were all there to see one thing: the Xbox.

Backstage, Gates turned to Kevin Bachus, at the time Xbox director of third party relations and the man charged with getting all those Japanese executives out there in the audience to make games for Microsoft's new console. “Here, hold this,” Gates said, pulling out his wallet. “I don't like having anything in my pocket when I'm talking.”

Rumours have swirled for some time now that Microsoft was planning a new entry in the racing game series, created by Bizarre Creations, for Xbox One. But, according to Microsoft Studios boss Phil Spencer, there's nothing PGR-related in the works - and it sounds like there won't be anything PGR-related in the works for quite some time.

"Maybe," he said on an IGN podcast when asked if PGR was part of Xbox One's future.

Originally set for a late 2005 release, Escape was in development by Namco's Bay Area studio, who created the first Dead to Rights in 2003 and the cover shooter Kill Switch in 2004. The licensed game was given the go-ahead by IP owners Kurt Russell, John Carpenter, and the now late Debra Hill. In fact, Russell was on board to voice the iconic character he embodied - who Hideo Kojima later cited as the inspiration for Metal Gear's Solid Snake.

As we can see from the trailer, Escape was going to feature a blend of shooting, stealth and melee combat. Selling points included "deadly double-barrelled gun battles," "stealthy shadows tactics," and "close-quarters combat." That's right, Snake. Don't forget your CQC!

Dead Island developer Techland is opening up a new studio in Vancouver, Canada to assist on the development of its open-world zombie parkour game Dying Light.

The new branch, Digital Scapes Studios, will be headed by former Radical Entertainment (Prototype 2, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction) technical director Marcin Chady. This marks Techland's first foray into North American development, as both of Techland's other branches are in Poland.

According to VentureBeat, Digital Scapes will work on "key elements" of Dying Light.

The original Dragon Age: Origins allowed players to pick from one of several races as they began their journey, but its divisive sequel, Dragon Age 2, set players in the prescribed role of a human named Hawke. The third title in the franchise, Dragon Age: Inquisition, will see the return of multiple player races.

This juicy tidbit was revealed by GameInformer. "Large and varied environments, customisable armor, and the return of multiple player races are just a few of the ways BioWare is addressing feedback from previous titles in order to shape a new future for the franchise," read the report.

Additionally, Inquisition will have mounts: a first for the series. These were shown off in GameInformer's video below, then confirmed by series executive producer Mark Darrah on Twitter.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1604580Tue, 06 Aug 2013 23:44:00 +0100Fear is the path to the dark side

Please note that there are spoilers about Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 in this article, although I try to keep them to a minimum.

To this day one decision still plagues Chris Avellone's mind: should Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords have had more Revan in it? BioWare and LucasArts hadn't forbidden it - instead, Obsidian had decided to focus on new characters to allow more creative breathing room.

"But I don't know if that was the best decision," Avellone ponders, speaking in a Eurogamer KOTOR2 podcast other members of Obsidian and The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod join us for. You can listen to it in full right now, jokes 'n all.

In the days of yore i.e. circa 1999, the Marathon devs at Bungie were working on a game codenamed "Project Phoenix," before the studio was acquired by Microsoft and shifted all its efforts toward Halo, leaving the abandoned Phoenix unable to rise from the ashes.

Now, for the first time, Bungie's Jason Jones has peeled back the curtain, explaining that this canned project was a "Minecraft-like" strategy hybrid.

"It was a game that was based on a technology that was sort of Minecraft-like," Jones said in an interview with IGN. "You could build castles out of blocks, for example, and then knock them down. Ultimately the reason the game never saw the light of day was because of Halo. The [Project Phoenix] team got scavenged a number of times, both on Halo 1 and Halo 2, to finish Halo."